Sonic the Hedgehog #220 [February 2011] Peppers/Austin/Herms cover: "Someone left the hedgehog in the rain..." No, wait, that joke has got to be forty-something years old by now. Anyway, to nobody's surprise, Sonic's getting shot last issue has proven to be non-lethal, especially in an extreme close-up. "In Service To The King: Part 2" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Jamal Peppers; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Matt Herms; Lettering: John E. Workman; Editor: Paul Kaminski; Editor-in-Chief: Victor Gorelick; President: Mike Pellerito; Sega Marketing reps: Cincy Chau and Jerry Chu To recap: After Geoff ambushed Sonic, he left our hero adrift in the Special Zone, wondering what Geoff's game really is, and how to get out of there. Back at Mogul's office, Geoff states that the Chaos Emerald is to be used "to restore Ixis Naugus to his former glory." That's assuming that he HAD any former glory, which you wouldn't know if you started reading this comic about the time the infamous "Naugus Games" appeared in Special #15. Mogul, for his part, refers to the broken-down whatever as "the last of my old order." I smell retcon for dinner. Anyway, Geoff also mentions that restoring Old Grumpus will be good for the casino business and "make Sonic miserable," whereupon Mogul green-lights the scheme. I'll spare you the special effects and mumbo jumbo. One of Naugus's first acts is to put Geoff in a choke hold with that claw of his, but it's a hold that Geoff easily escapes by ... ...disapparating?!? SFX: tires screeching Ordinarily I'd save the autopsy stuff for the Head section but this is too blatant to leave alone. I've been with this comic since before Geoff first came on the scene in S20's "Deadliest of the Species: Prologue." He has always, ALWAYS been a secret agent as befits his having been created by James Bond fanboy Ken Penders. But THIS move is more of a bow to the books of J. K. Rowling than to those of Ian Fleming. I'm going to fast-forward myself out on a limb and state for the record that this is NOT Geoffrey with whom Naugus is dealing (or double-dealing, as the case may be). I offer four bits of evidence: 1. In the previous installment, when Sonic asks Geoff about his wife, Hershey, it takes him two panels to come up with a lame excuse for her absence. 2. When Feist makes an off-hand reference to unnamed "Others" who've penetrated the Special Zone, Geoff changes the subject before Feist can elaborate for Sonic's benefit. 3. You have the Disapparation we've just mentioned, and I'm pretty sure they don't teach you that move outside of Hogwarts. 4. Four pages from now, Nicole will inform Sonic that "someone" crossed over from the Special Zone via the star posts. That Nicole wasn't able to read their signature (and she's been doing that sort of thing during the "Treasure Team Tango" arc) tells me that she's been blocked. Conclusion: whoever or whatever just delivered the Emerald to Naugus, it's not Geoff. Just putting that out there. So back to the story. Cutting through the verbal fog, it appears that faux-Geoff is engineering the takeover of New Mobotropolis for Naugus's benefit, although there's still a certain amount of bad blood between Mogul and Naugus. Geoff breaks the ice by informing them that he shot Sonic, which apparently is always good for a laugh if you're a villain. Either that, or else they know how much of a joke the CCA is. Back in the SZ, both Sonic and Feist realize that if something doesn't happen soon, both of them will be bored to death. So Sonic demonstrates some basic orb-hopping and Feist lets him go. Yeah, just like that. Kind of dull, I know. After checking in with Nicole and getting the word that "someone" emerged from the Zone, Sonic heads for the Council to bring them up to speed. Prince Elias gets the word from Doctor Quack that King Max is too incapacitated to undo the current political order. Rosemary Prower, one of the hold-over revolutionaries from the "House of Cards" arc (S178-179) that begat the Council in the first place, thinks that the Royal Family should be put in the Royal Closet. Elias vetoes that idea, and informs Rosemary that going into hiding would really be a No-Sale with Sally. So for the moment, not much has changed. Meanwhile, at chez Mongoose, Ash tries explaining to the band why the sudden change in musical direction. Fortunately for Ash, Mina shows up and takes the floor. All it takes is a well- phrased appeal to everyone's fears (sort of like the way the Iraq War got sold so soon after 9/11) to get the band on the same page. Unknown to Sonic and Mina, this is playing into Naugus's claw. HEAD: No way is Ian so sloppy a writer that he's forget that Geoff is a spy and not a wizard. That particular move, whether central to the story or not, grabbed my attention and managed to overshadow the rest of the story for me. Not that there was all that much to overshadow: nothing has changed politically since Part 1, and the scene with Mina and the band is pretty much just a tease. In fact, this whole story arc slowed to a halt once pseudo- Geoff shot Sonic. Frankly I don't get a sense of a real story here; it's more like Ian is setting up the board and taking the pieces out of the box before the REAL game begins. I got the same vibe from the Feist sequence. When Shadow and then Team Dark went up against him in "The Ultimate Lifeform" (SU4), the rules were pretty straightforward: get the better of a challenge from Feist and win a Chaos Emerald. Only trouble is, Feist makes sure the game is rigged. So Team Dark alters the parameters by having Omega shoot at Feist while Shadow steals the Emerald. I thought it was pretty rotten to cheat like that, but it was consistent with the story. Here, however, there appears to be NO contest, only a show of Sonic's skills set of which the easily-amused Feist approves. I get the sinking feeling that Ian only needed to fill a couple of pages because this added a grand total of nothing to the story ... unless Feist plans to break into New Mobotropolis to provide a deus ex machina at some point. And really, nobody wants that. OK, so we have the players in place, but they're really just marking time until the next issue. And Ian certainly isn't going to tell all about Geoff turning magician all of a sudden, unless he's saving it for an expository interlude the way the scene between Sally and Bunnie in "Blackout" (S207) broke up the Iron Dominion continuity. Pretty disappointing. Head Score: 5. EYE: Only with the final page does Jamal Peppers do anything spectacular in terms of the visuals. If you go back and check out the backgrounds of his panels, you'll find a lot of panels where there's literally NO background, whether it's inside the Special Zone or Mogul's office or even the Council chamber. It certainly doesn't remind me of some of Ron Lim's minimalist backgrounds. But it only adds to the sense that this one was shoved onstage and told to vamp until the next story is ready. Again, disappointing. Eye Score: 6. HEART: Perhaps the biggest disappointment of all. Sonic gets shot ... but we aren't sure with what. It looks like some kind of electrified Nerf(tm) dart, and it proves to be just as deadly. I know Sonic has a stupid fast recovery time from any injury he sustains in this comic, but this is ridiculous. And the scene with Geoff, Mogul and Naugus, aside from its WTF moment when Geoff disapparates, is wall-to-wall exposition that you just want to be over with. That's the kind of vibe I got from the writing. For that matter, the Council scene and the Mina Addresses The Band scene felt the same way. This is disappointing all the way round. Heart Score: 5. "From The Inside Out" Story: Ian Flynn; Art: Jamal Peppers; Ink: Terry Austin; Color: Ray Dillon; Lettering: John E. Workman Waking up and seeing Eggman as your doctor is enough to make you believe in alternative medicine. Yet this is the scene that greets Lien-Da as she comes to and gets an earful from the Doc for three pages recapping events from Sonic 211's "Home Invasion: Part 2." Since this is his big scene he also gets to be his own color commentator: "She [Regina] loses points for relying on magic.' Bah. Simple energy and matter conversions that haven't been properly documented by good, hard, science yet, that's all." But he finally shuts up for ... the Big Reveal, the results of which are actually pretty good. But when Lien-Da wants an explanation, Eggman tells her "It's all part of the game." Basically, he doesn't trust Snively, his Grandmasters, or anyone else in his employ, expecting that any or all of them will turn on him in a blink. So they either have to pull their weight or hope they survive if they try to go rogue. Lien-Da as much as says she can live with that arrangement; not like she has much of an alternative. Besides, it's evident she likes the Doc's handiwork. HEAD: Again, this is pretty much Exposition Row, where Eggman is bringing Lien-Da and the readers up to speed on what's happened over the preceding nine issues. Yet for reasons I'll discuss in the Eye section, it's not as troubling as the preceding story. Especially since Eggy denounces the Queen's technomagic as so much "energy and matter conversions." That puts him in opposition to the forces of mumbo-jumbo at work in this comic. The thing I liked about SatAM, in addition to the solid writing, exemplary voice work and brilliant characters, was the lack of reliance on a Force-like solution to the problems of the characters. Sure, there were Sonic's Power Rings and the Time Stones from "Blast To The Past" two-parter, but it didn't become something they fell back on EVERY BLESSED EPISODE! And now Eggman, who didn't get a chance to assess the Techno-Mage Regina last time because he was rendered non compos mentis by getting into one too many duels with Sonic, lets it be known that he's come down on the side of good old-fashioned Science! And plastic surgery. This is really the Doc's story; Lien-Da may be on the receiving end of his handiwork, but aside from asking "Why?" and being told that the answer is purely tactical, she may as well have been on a tracheal tube and letting Eggy do ALL the talking. And Ian takes a few more pieces out of the box and waits until next issue to roll the dice or whatever. Head Score: 6. EYE: You really have to look at the artwork for this story and the previous one closely to let it sink in that they were BOTH done by Jamal Peppers. The difference here: Ray Dillon's color work. It's interesting that he's kept the palette in a light green to play off the color of Eggman's scrubs. Rather than having a pleasant effect, it gives off an aura of menace, aided in huge part by the lighting. Throughout this story, Peppers has done something I don't think I've seen any other Sonic artist attempt before: fluorescent light fixture glare. I've seen PhotoShop lens flare too many times to count, but fluorescent lighting? Honestly, I can't think of any instance. But if you've ever been in a medical situation, this is what you're likely to see. And you'd see it from the same point of view, which Jamal gives us for the first three pages until Lien-Da gets off the gurney and the POV shifts. You can practically hear the lights humming (especially if they're defective). And being forced to maintain the same POV for three pages is extremely disconcerting, which is the whole idea. Really masterful. Eye Score: 10. HEART: My short-hand judgment of a story's Heart prospects is "How much do I care about what's going on?" It's hard to care about Eggman, of course, and the only other character in this two-person drama obviously hasn't learned anything from having been blown up YET AGAIN! No growth, no development, no nothing. Just a get-together by two of the stock villains, one of whom is very stocky indeed. Pieces on the game board, really. Heart Score: 6. Fan Art: Zoe submits a portrait of Sonic, Silver and the Arctic Freedom Fighters; Rebecca gives us Tails wanting to join in the fun with Super Sonic going up against the Robotnik mecha from Sonic 3; and Lenny has the cast facing a big Eggman ... bigger than usual, anyway. Fan Funnies: Remember Archimedes the Fire Ant? Gregory and Josiah do. Off-Panel: for the benefit of the continuity accountants out there, a review of who has which Chaos Emerald. Sonic-Grams: C.T.C. is told that it doesn't hurt to be roboticized, that Sonic and Sally will soon be an item again (C., for the record, is a Sonic/Amy shipper), and that Shadow is not evil but instead is "heroic," which I don't buy for a minute. Still, "dark, brooding and misunderstood" probably goes against Archie Editorial policy. Silver isn't bad, either, just badly written. Myles gets a lesson in why Sonic doesn't stay "super" for very long. Rachel and Linzie learn that there hasn't been a proper "Sonic Heroes" tie-in; given how episodic the game is, I'm not surprised. "Sonic Rush," which didn't have much of a plot, got a tie-in, though they fail to mention that even though there was no tie-in story to "Sonic Rush Adventure," it didn't matter. Marine was the best thing about the game and she got exploited without referring to the story. Editorial is coy about a Scourge variation on Chaos Control, which is really Shadow's thing anyway. And as far as other ships are concerned: Shadow is still too angsty even if he's made his peace with Maria's death; Scourge is a reluctant love interest for Psycho Rosy and probably just uses Fiona; and I don't know if Ray is too young, but is there a possibility that his fawning interest in Mighty which was on display back in S212's "The Roads We Take" will go on to the next level? If we don't ask, Archie won't tell, and let's keep it that way.